In the city of Cyprus in 300 BC
lived a very rich merchant Zeno.
On the way from Phoenicia to Piraeus
his boat and all his cargo sank.
Because of this single event,
beyond the control of Zeno or anyone else,
this very rich man suddenly became poor in an instant.
Imagine you are Zeno. How would you feel about your entire life's work washed away by the force of nature alone?
What is the correct reaction? Would you be angry?
Sad? Do you feel like life has failed you? For most
of us, these would all be normal reactions,
but not for Zeno, the father of Stoicism.
One small change lasts forever,
and a small transformation in your thinking can lead
to bigger and more effective changes later.
The essence of stoicism is the definition of acceptance and indifference.
After reading the works of Socrates and
other great philosophers, Zeno created the Stoics and
taught them. According to Zeno, we have little control over what happens to us,
but we have the power to influence how it affects us, and
we must use that control effectively.
Instead of crying over the spilled milk, or in this case the drowned objects, Zeno focused on
calmness about the situation, remaining calm and neutral despite the difficulty.
Today people think of Stoics as unbreakable,
people who don't often stop at emotional
extremes, going through things like
tantrums
or anxiety. But the original idea of
stoicism was much more.
Rather than simply describing unfeeling people, Stoicism was a way of looking at, describing,
and understanding the world. It was a way of life,
, and that way of life lasted for centuries.
Stoic philosophy can be applied to situations
today just as it was applied thousands of years ago, and its benefits are just as impressive
.
Stoicism allows us to process those negative feelings
from negative experiences and turn them into thoughts that give us a unique view of the world.
Perspective is everything and everyone in the
world has different experiences
and therefore different perspectives on things.
While the Stoics met,
discussed and publicly taught philosophy, their general philosophy was widely known.
They believed that Stoic principles could be useful to everyone and
and therefore it was of no use to hide this knowledge behind the four walls of a school or a palace courtyard.
As a result, everyone from slaves to emperors
could learn and become Stoics, and they did.
Some of the world's greatest stoics
Epictetus, which means "possessed" because he was
once a slave, Seneca, who was a
noted statesman, and Marcus Aurelius,
the Roman emperor.
of the most powerful men who ever lived.
The early Stoics practiced what they preached,
avoiding all forms of segregation and
leading the fight against inequality.
They even invented the word "cosmopolitan",
which literally means "citizen of the world".
When people now hear the word, we think of cities
like New York, Toronto, Dubai and London, because
as different as they are, this unity and togetherness was preached by the Stoics.
When Stoicism was founded,
women were not allowed to practice philosophy,
but the Stoics were completely against it.
Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, once said:
“Greed is not only in men,
and a natural inclination to virtue,
but also in women. Women love noble and righteous deeds
less than men,
and oppose such deeds. Since
this is, why is it fitting that men
should seek and study how they can live well,
that is, they should do philosophy, but not women?
Even when it was not popular,
women were free to study Stoicism and become Stoics themselves.
So why do so many people follow a stoic lifestyle?
In a world full of unexpected events, our emotions can
tend to mess things up.
In reality, we are sad not because
bad things happen to us, but because
unexpected bad things happen to us. Rain is
good. It helps water our plants,
provides water for livestock and keeps
temperatures cool and humid. But the truth is,
when that dark cloud catches you outside without an umbrella, it's never a good experience.
Why don't we cry when it starts to rain? This is because even when the situation is bad, we have learned to wait for the rain. It is something that is
inevitable, we cannot control the weather.
although it sucks, the rain passes and the fire burns.
Stoicism teaches us that we should also expect all the evil that can happen. Imagine the worst possible outcome
and take comfort that it could happen.
One of the Stoic exercises is known as
"willing discomfort," an exercise designed to increase gratitude. Sleep on your
kitchen floor, take a cold shower when you normally take a hot shower, eat nothing but potatoes for a few days and stuff like that.
This exercise will help you realize
that no matter how hard things get
you can still survive and maybe even succeed if you have the right mindset. If we can endure these uncomfortable situations
, we are indirectly preparing our minds for future disasters.
In the current state of the world, with
advertising constantly shoved down
's throats, we've been led to believe that if we don't have the next best thing,
will look a certain way or
make a certain amount of money. ,
that we will never be happy, this
message is more important now than ever.
We come into the world not knowing much about anything.
We grow up being taught things at home,
at school and observing the world itself.
The point is that many of these three sources of knowledge teach us in different ways.
The question is, do we have to enter all this information? When we do this, we may unknowingly set unrealistic expectations for our
lives, ultimately leaving us disappointed and
dissatisfied. You can't live like this.
We should instead focus on improving ourselves,
ourselves. Let us do things for ourselves,
and for that alone. Attaching external hope or secondary attachments to actions
almost always leads to disappointment.
Most often we fill this void with external things.
Blow all your money on a nice car, house,
or even a family. Sometimes we all do
these things for their extrinsic value instead of
their intrinsic value. But Stoicism teaches that if you approach life in this way, you set the value of happiness at.
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